Sunday, December 24, 2006

Babel (or, 21 Grams Part Deux)

Guns are bad.

You don't have to see the film anymore.

If you've seen 21 Grams you'll know what to expect. Gritty depressing but ultimately hollow posturing. And plenty of it.

I've been following Iñárritu since his excellent debut, Amores Perros but since then I have come to see his films as pointless narrative sliced and spliced to appear more interesting. Babel raises this to high art. It is a pity because, structually, when it is done well, the interlocking, interweaving personal drama is one of my favourites. The key is finding the thematic balance and the integrated tone. Babel had neither.

The three stories are reasonably unrelated, with the least related of them being the most interesting. This of course doesn't bode well for the film as a whole.

I'm probably being harsh. Babel is a film I have been hanging out for and it disappointed on so many levels. The performances of Cate and Brad are less than unremarkable and their characters are not even one dimensional. The film, despite its title, has little to do with language and when it tries to deal with language directly it comes across as flippant. And it is boring.

Don't bother.

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3 Comments:

At 1:42 pm, Blogger RC said...

i agree amorres perros is excellent, but i was not fond of this or 21 grams.

blah!

 
At 5:14 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shit man I was going to see this tonight, think I might give it a miss now. haha thanks for saving me $18.

 
At 6:27 pm, Blogger Glenn Dunks said...

I had sorta the same reaction. None of the stories have a point. None of the stories even end (they're all missing the final act). I keep wanting to say that they should have deleted the least connected story (the Tokyo strand) and given the other three a proper ending (instead of a montage over music), but... the Tokyo strand was my favourite. It was the most interesting and well-acted (Pitt, Blanchett, Barraza and especially Bernal have pretty much zero to do in the movie other than scream or sit around). It was also the best visually and aurally. Plus, that final shot over Tokyo was amazing.

I didn't hate the movie, but I wish it was so much better. At it's current state it's just a bunch of characters not doing much while bad stuff happens to them.

The Tokyo drug trip scene was amazing though. "September"!

 

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